September 20, 2009

Independent prosecutors should not be appointed lightly. But in this case, there are good reasons why Atty. Gen. Eric Holder and other political appointees in the Justice Department should step aside. First, although no allegations have yet touched the Obama campaign, ACORN did have significant ties to the campaign and other progressive causes. Published reports show that ACORN and its subsidiaries received some $800,000 from the Obama campaign to get out the vote. Second, ACORN is intimately tied to the Service Employees International Union, one of President Barack Obama's most powerful and vocal supporters.

ACORN's close ties to the progressive movement and Democratic Party mean that there will be little public confidence if Holder decides not to pursue an ambitious investigation and ultimately prosecute....

What we have seen on tape cries out for a serious, independent investigation to determine if ACORN and its affiliates are a criminal enterprise, whether they have spent federal grants lawfully, whether they helped taxpayers file fraudulent returns, and whether they violated laws prohibiting tax-exempt organizations from engaging in partisan politics. These are big questions, and the public needs to know that Washington's answers are fair and impartial.

41 comments:

ACORN has ordered an independent investigation. It will be led by its advisory council, which includes top men.

Who?

Top men.

Men such as John Podesta, president of the nonprofit Center for American Progress, and Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union.

So, clearly, there is already an independent investigation being conducted.

No need for the Justice Department to appoint an Independent Prosecutor. Your fellow lawyers in the legal community are too busy prosecuting the Black Panthers and searching for Ken Gladney's attacker.

Holder ought to appoint one because he has already made several apparently political prosecution decisions and of course the ACORN CEO made the case for one when she said that the current flap was caused because they have close ties to Obama.

I don't see any other way to find out if they are a criminal enterprise. There seems to be plenty of evidence that it is likely, half the country thinks so, and the nature of the organization's work makes it important to know.

What I don't get is how this obviously partisan group that electioneer for leftwing Democrats exclusively gets non-profit tax exempt status. Why hasn't the IRS investigated their electioneering activities on behalf of one political party?

ACORN has ordered an independent investigation. It will be led by its advisory council, which includes top men... such as John Podesta, president of the nonprofit Center for American Progress, and Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union.

Well now we can all rest easy knowing that Podesta and Stern will follow the evidence wherever it leads!

Is there a single person with firing synapses who honestly believes tax money was not used to Get Out The Vote ... for Obama?

That's one.

Can there possibly be a single person out there who is aware of Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, 1989, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1999, 2005, 2007 and 2008 that does not see Acorn deeply complicit in the meltdown of housing and financial sectors?

That's two.

Now that two utes gone and done the job our fourth estate has resolutely and arrogantly refused to do and the whole egregious enterprise has exploded in everybody's face like an I Love Lucy episode on a national scale and can not possibly be dismissed or ignored.

That's three.

So yeah. We need an independent prosecutor, full-on inquisition style. But look at who we've installed to lead our country, to 'drain the swamp' as it were. We deserve what we get and what we do not get.

I'm against special prosecutors, so no. Look at Ken Starr- appointed to look into Whitewater, ended up with a token finding that had nothing to do with the case. Or look at Patrick J. Fitzgerald, appointed to look into the Plame business, but ignored the real guy and came up with a token finding of his own- just to show that the whole business wasn't a colossal waste of time.

If the AG can't do the job he was appointed to do, he should be fired or step down. No prosecution czars, thanks.

Regardless of how the Obama administration turns out, I hope a lot of lazy reasoning people learned something from their votes or failure to vote.

Many people mistakenly voted this organization and people like them into control over the most powerful nation that ever existed. Your vote is not some Internet poll about what's better Packman or Tetris, nor is it a place to make a statement. It's hiring thousands of people to effect the lives of most of the people of the world. You don't just pick any guy who walks in the door because he seemed cool.

As much as I disliked, all the other choices, I can't imagine any of the Repubs or even Hillary being as corrupt and dangerous. Hell, I'd prefer a Perot/Nader ticket to this. That at least would be funny.

Brian O'Connell - I agree with you. I do want to say however, that though I believed the Clinton investigation to have been a waste of time, I am not forgiving of the characterizations of Dean Starr, who conducted himself admirably and with honor in a job that saw the vast left-wing and it's daily media conspirators seeking to destroy his reputation and daily obfuscate the truth.

If Plame required a special prosecutor to find out who leaked the news that she was an employee of the CIA who drove to her office in Langley every day (hint: read Vanity Fair to find out), then it just makes sense to find out who's been shoveling money into Acorn, and who's benefited.

WV: cobbra (no lie!), the snakes who insure you after you lose your job.

Besides, I realize the squirrel here is that the people doing this were Not Approved Journalists, but isn't the rather large elephant the fact that child prostitution was embraced by so many offices of ACORN?

I liked the analogy with science and science fiction above. I think that you can attribute it to the fact that liberals seem to project a lot - in this case, they knew that they would have a hyper-partisan DOJ if they ever got back into power, and just assumed that the Republicans would too. So, they put the guy who helped get Marc Rich his pardon (and Bill and Hillary Clinton a lot of money) in charge there, and a tax cheat in charge of the department collecting taxes. That sort of thing.

I never thought that I would ever say anything good about Janet Reno, after burning down the compound in Waco and being involved with Elian Gonzalez, but in retrospect, she was nowhere near as partisan as Eric Holder has turned out to be. Not sure when we have seen one as nakedly political - maybe we need to go back to when the AG was the President's brother and campaign manager.

In retrospect, Reno was just inept, allowing a lot of strong political subordinates run amok on her watch, such as Holder, Gorelick, etc.

I ran across a nifty short version of the mortgage financial melt down, ACORN occupying bank lobbies and intimidating institutions etc., the other day, but this is all I could come up with today connecting ACORN and CRA.

Please note this information was available BEFORE the election, but no MSM bothered to do anything with it.

Here is the other link. Scroll down past the Obama- scrubbing-links-to-ACORN-from-websites stuff and there is more info on ACORN involvement with mortgage crisis.

As for tax exempt status, there is the cutesy "you know we're supposed to be non-partisan" {wink, wink} in the first video. But I noticed in one of the videos that on the bulletin board to the "prostitute's" left as she walked in another place was a WE WON poster.